"Happiness, true happiness, is an inner quality. It is a state of mind. If your mind is at peace, you are happy. If your mind is at peace, but you have nothing else, you can be happy. If you have everything the world can give - pleasure, possessions, power - but lack peace of mind, you can never be happy."
- Dada Vaswani

"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."
- Ann Landers

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
- Abraham Lincoln

MainMessageForToday
People sometimes change when they are given power (e.g. when they are promoted to a managerial position or other position of authority). Power tends to reveal one's true character.

"Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate."
- G. K. Chesterton, Heretics

Do you automatically respect people in authority, people with power?
Maybe there is reason to believe we should question people in authority, but I am not sure it applies in all cases....

From the song 'Nobody Greater' by Vashawn Mitchell:

I climbed up to the highest mountain
I looked all around, couldn't find nobody,
Went down into the deepest valley
Looked all around down there, couldn't find nobody,
I went across the deep blue sea
Couldn't find one to compare... to your grace, your love, your mercy,
Nobody greater... nobody greater than you.

Searched all over... couldn't find nobody,
I looked high and low... still couldn't find nobody,
Nobody greater... nobody greater no... nobody greater than you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyRv-tbGJ1Y

"Dealing with backstabbers, there was one thing I learned. They're only powerful when you got your back turned."
- Eminem

“One of the most powerful lessons in life is to recognize that no one can give you power, and many people don’t want you to have it. You have to find the courage to seize it, own it and hold on!”
― Shannon L. Alder

"The most formidable attribute of temptation is its increasing power, its accelerating ratio of velocity. Every act of repetition increases power, diminishes resistance. It is like the letting out of waters--where a drop can go, a river can go. Whoever yields to temptation, subjects himself to the law of falling bodies."
- Horace Mann, Thoughts

"Ambition makes the same mistake concerning power that avarice makes concerning wealth. She begins by accumulating power as a means to happiness, and she finishes by continuing to accumulate it as an end."
- Charles Caleb Colton

"We are driven by five genetic needs: survival, love and belonging, power, freedom, and fun."
- William Glasser

#MainMessageForToday
People are #motivated by a lot of things such as survival, money, love, power, and even failure. What motivates you?

"Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives."
- Anthony Robbins

"Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free."
- Jim Morrison

"There is nothing in the world so difficult as that task of making up one's mind. Who is there that has not longed that the power and privilege of selection among alternatives should be taken away from him in some important crisis of his life, and that his conduct should be arranged for him, either this way or that, by some divine power if it were possible, - by some patriarchal power in the absence of divinity, - or by chance, even, if nothing better than chance could be found to do it? But no one dares to cast the die, and to go honestly by the hazard. There must be the actual necessity of obeying the die, before even the die can be of any use."
- Anthony Trollope, Phineas Finn

LifeLessonsForAll.com: I think saying "corrupt people abuse their power" is pretty much the same as saying "power corrupts". Because people have power, they tend to believe they can get away with anything and become corrupt. What do you think?

"Power does not corrupt people; rather corrupt people abuse their power. Power does not do things; people who have power do things. And whether the power is used properly or corruptly is up to the person.....Mothers have great power over their children, and teachers have power over their students. Does the power corrupt them?"
- Stephen Hicks, http://www.stephenhicks.org/2012/09/20/power-does-not-corrupt/

Meaning of "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely"......
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/absolute-power-corrupts-absolutely.html

 "All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Great men are almost always bad men."
- Machiavelli & Lord Acton
http://maartens.home.xs4all.nl/philosophy/machiavelli/prince/notes/chapter08rem.html

"With great power comes great responsibility."
- Voltaire

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
- Abraham Lincoln